mid section blues: Army Todber in the Spring

5AM saw me walking the dogs in the light of a Hunters Moon, the dawn chorus calling the morning sun forward into the new day. The Partridge were scattered by the dogs as they scrunched their way through the frosty grass. Back home for a cup of tea and a custard cream, let the chickens out and feed them; load the Flyer and head of for a proper mans breakfast at Skevys Cafe in Shaftesbury.

6.10 and over beacon hill and westward. The moon was winking a final goodnight to its polar opposite the sun which was rising in the east in my rear view mirror.

Good turn out today 40+, Todber is a popular venue and rightly so. It hails the start of our run of commercial venues and reasonable bags of fish, instead of scratching with squat and thin lines, we can use tow ropes and hollo elastic and hooks bigger than a 20.

The breakfast beat me I couldn't manage it and that set the tone for the day really. Whilst I did draw White posts for the first time, I drew the bottom lake that was as good as it got. Whilst I was busy for the almost all of the 6 hours match ( did have a quite hour in the middle). My tactics of fishing banded four mill pellet 10 inches deep of the lily pad at 16 mtrs. Was not entirely successful. I did catch but only pasty size fish, skimmers and Rudd and Roach. Sprinkling in the micro had the fish swirling but no decent fish. Couple of big-uns were hooked but they ploughed straight into the lilies and the red 11 hollo elastic was not man enough.

A strong cross wind was making fishing long difficult so I came over my 6 mtr track swim. Two more roach 1 6 oz Tench meant and no carp for 30 minutes forced me to re think. Ivan to my left had been fishing down the edge for an hour. I thought he had gone to the edge too early, but it was paying dividends and he was getting one a chuck.

I decided to try my edge swims I had been feeding i started catching straight away with a piece of worm, but it was a 2 lb Perch. More Roach followed so I swapped from worm to 4 mill Bacon grill. Then I started to catch slightly bigger. Ivan was probably 20 fish in front of me and had me beat. I did enjoy seeing him foul hook an eel in the tail on sweetcorn! The eel was a good 4 lb and he struggled manfully to get the thing in the net for 5 minutes before it broke him and trashed his rig. I decided to up the feed rate to catch him , but he said it would kill it and it did - know it all.

The weigh in begins and we have had a mixed day

My section first A section White posts. I have had a lovely days fishing but nearly 29 kilo or 63.8 lb has me 8th in a 15 man section so midsectionblues.